<p>Monday afternoon we continued on to Worcester, MA to see CLARK UNIVERSITY. Clark is a CTCL school with an emphasis on the sciences. Again we self toured as they only offer one session/tour a day and that’s in the AM. They did give us a guidebook with a walking tour to follow. Campus is beautiful, facilities looked great but the area around the school turned both of us right off. Just run-down, nothing to go to or hang out at anywhere in the area. Also appears to be about 30% commuters and that’s not the residential feel she is looking for. So that one is off, even though she really liked the campus itself.</p>
<p>We spent the night with a HS friend of mine who lives in Boston and the next morning went on to NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY. I got interested in NEU when it looked like she might be a NMF, and even though she won’t, the co-op program, city location, etc intrigue her. Also a 6 year pharmacy program she recently became interested in.</p>
<p>NEU is modern and the admissions office is slick. Huge touchscreens on the walls, ipads with your own personalized info, very animated admissions staff. The info session was actually very informative even though I’ve read a lot about NEU she hadn’t. How things work with housing (guaranteed all 4 but optional last 2), co-ops, and the ability to apply to one college and easily move to another (unlike, say, Carnegie Mellon or Columbia where moving from Engineering to, say, Neuroscience is exactly like applying to transfer to a completely different school). </p>
<p>As she might want pharmacy, might want engineering, but isn’t really sure, I appreciate a school giving her the ability to keep her options open. </p>
<p>The tour was nice. Everything modern, right in Boston with two “T” lines but still a well defined campus in a lovely area. Lots of options for food as with many large Us, but also a lot of smaller classes. It stays on the list. </p>
<p>That afternoon we visited TUFTS. This one was her pick, not mine/ours, and I think she has a friend that liked it so wanted to see it. I personally kept thinking “Tufts syndrome!!” all the time we were there ;)</p>
<p>We were late for the info session as the NEU tour ran over but got the gist of the app process and “undergrad focus”. (Do they all say that? I want to visit a large U and hear that “we really only care about our grad students but hey at least you get to look in the window of our fabulous research facilities!”). The tour was fine. Campus is pretty. It takes maybe a half hour to get into Boston proper and it is doable via school+public transport but I got the sense kids didn’t do it much. Our tour guide said he goes once a month, maybe. </p>
<p>We weren’t able to see into most buildings because they were shut tight for summer. I often wonder why they won’t give a tour guide a key to a dorm so they can show it, but oh well. </p>
<p>I left feeling “meh” but D liked it. This will be a recurring theme - she eliminated only 2 out of the 7 schools we saw.</p>
<p>The next morning we got a drive-through tour of BOSTON UNIVERSITY, mainly because the friend we were staying with went there herself. BU is nice enough but too spread out, not defined-campus enough, and probably too big. That was the #2 “off the list” school. </p>
<p>After BU we left Boston and took a day and a half off and stayed at another friend’s house on the Cape. </p>
<p>Leaving the Cape we headed to New London to see CONNECTICUT COLLEGE. We considered a few in CT to visit - Wesleyan, Trinity, etc but settled on Conn because of the location and the lack of major Greek life (she has determined that she is not into the Greek thing and any campus where that dominates the social scene will be dropped). Conn’s info session was led by a very enthusiastic admissions rep who seemed to care deeply about the opportunities there. They’ve got some neat programs like am more or less required co-op semester, a very large travel abroad contingent, lots of small classes, an honor code. I kind of wanted to apply myself.</p>
<p>The tour was fine - it rained some but our guide was a fun guy from NJ who had just graduated and was planning to be a dentist - at Conn he studied Biochem. Again, lovely campus, and quite a few people around, enough to justify having the dining hall up and running. Actually, when I said a lot of people were at Amherst I was actually thinking of Conn…Amherst had some but Conn had a lot. </p>
<p>Conn is a statistical “match” for D and it stays on the list. </p>
<p>Final school is one we visited when she was a sophomore - BARNARD COLLEGE. We did the tour but not the info session so since we were in NY for a wedding anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to do the session. I asked her dad to take her because he has had nothing to do with college stuff for S or for her, and I wanted him to get a sense of what he’d be expected to do. He took her and came back saying he was going to start getting tax stuff together so I really, really, hope that was the thing he needed to begin to get involved. </p>
<p>She looked at Columbia last year and loved the campus and the students she saw but didn’t like the Core, or the fact that she’d have to commit to engineering or not-engineering before applying. Barnard shares Columbia’s campus and has a lot less stringent gen ed requirements (the “9 ways of knowing”), and is an all women, small liberal arts college with all the resources of Columbia U. I think she’d love it. She will not consider any other all-women college, she says. </p>
<p>So Barnard is definitely on the list.</p>
<p>Based on these visits I’d say she learned a few things. Her previous “big city” requirement has been dropped - she has now seen and loved Oberlin and Amherst and Conn and feels a small school that is 100% residential will work fine for her if it is the right one.</p>
<p>The “not Greek heavy” thing popped up for the first time on this trip, so that’s a useful narrow-down-the-list point. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, she likes so many schools so far that I foresee some serious difficulty in choosing where to apply and, if she has a lot of choices next spring, in choosing where to attend.</p>
<p>She is about to be at Brown for 3 weeks taking a course in epidemiology. Brown offers a ton of workshops on college stuff - essays, interview prep, how to take notes in college and such that I really hope she takes advantage of while she is there. She did a 3 week course two years ago and didn’t do any of those workshops, but she may find them more relevant now. I hope so. Brown, by the way, is the one Ivy she plans to apply to. Open curriculum, cool area, she has always liked it. </p>
<p>If anyone has specific questions about any of these schools ask and I will try to answer :)</p>
<p>test–last posts are from 6/17/14.</p>
<p>Thanks for the report!!</p>
<p>one more week of school. hurray!</p>
<p>The glitch is fixed!! Yay!! </p>
<p>There seems to be posts missing between June 17 and now, but at least it’s fixed. </p>
<p>DONE with junior year!!
</p>
<p>Celebrating . . . .</p>
<p>[Billy</a> Idol – “Dancing With Myself”](<a href=“Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself (Official Music Video) - YouTube”>Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself (Official Music Video) - YouTube)</p>
<p>:D/ </p>
<p>So my kitchen and living room have officially been cleaned up: no more notebooks, SAT/ACT books, papers all over the floor. We’ll see how long it lasts. </p>
<p>Testing. Things seem quiet. </p>
<p>I think we lost a few days worth of notes. Bummer. I wonder if it will reappear.</p>
<p>I emailed CC and asked about that. </p>
<p>Question for you. If a school, say JHU is coming to town, does it matter if you go to the local dog and pony show if you will be visiting the actual campus? Kids have something eternally more exciting to do the day that JHU will be in town, and we already have our tour reservations so they want to blow it off. What do you think? D16 says that these ‘colleges in your town’ shows are horrible. She gets nothing out of them that she couldn’t read on the website. Opinions?</p>
<p>twogirls, I am jealous that your table has become clear. Summer work has already started and taken over my dining room table. The packing for the summer experience has taken over my living room. Pretty soon, I’ll feel like we’re living in a studio. </p>
<p>The only advantage to seeing JHU in your town would be for your regional admissions counselor to be able to place the name with the face. This may not happen with a campus visit (?). </p>
<p>SAT-ACT books were cleared away, as well as notes… However I am sure these things will soon be replaced with college essay materials, and once school starts again my house will be a mess once again. </p>
<p>Mugglemom, I think your D is right. We went to a local Wash U presentation and it was beyond awful. Maybe a summer visit would be less crowded and more personal but the spring presentation was jammed to the rafters and provided literally no new insight. Worse yet, we had to pay for parking. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t waste my time with it if you are already planning to visit the campus. By any chance will your kids get to visit the regional reps when they visit the high school? That, I think, would be worthwhile. </p>
<p>I’m wondering the same thing as @MuggleMom. D was emailed about a 5-college local visit, and 2-3 of them are potential colleges. But we’ve been to this presentation before and it wasn’t spectacular, and she knows what she likes about them. Does it count against her if we don’t visit?</p>
<p>@3girls3cats – I’m still upset that we missed that WashU local event, and your post just made me feel much better about not being able to attend. ;)</p>